Levant, Vulturnus, and Xihai make lightning

“Levant, Vulturnus, Xihai,” I said and the three raised their hands. What happened next was something even I couldn’t see, an invisible play of molecules in the air to begin a process that Vulturnus assisted—or, perhaps more accurately, which assisted him. A moment later, lightning fell from the clear sky. Two more followed in quick succession, each directed towards a different place, a different weak point.

Even as the White Whale began to lower, the few remaining lights in the town flickered out and died. Here, on a clear night away from the city and light pollution, a million stars cloaked the skies in a display of natural beauty around the crown jewel of the moon. A cloudy night would have been more convenient, but I couldn’t deny it was breathtaking to look at.

I doubted the human inhabitants of the town agreed, whichever ones were still awake. Even with the light of flickering stars and a waning moon, the night got dark this far from civilization in a way that was hard to describe unless you could see it. People mocked others for being afraid of the dark, something easy to do in cities like Vale and Atlas where it never got dark, not truly. There were always lights on in buildings, lamp posts, towers and beacons. However childish people claimed it was to fear the darkness, we did everything in our power to distance ourselves from it, to escape it.

After all, it wasn’t that long ago when we couldn’t. When we didn’t have Dust and hadn’t pushed the darkness back. And in a world without that, when the Grimm were so at home in the night…darkness was something to be feared, something synonymous with danger and death.

It still was, really—once all the lights went out.

I looked at Vulturnus who flickered and flashed beside me, looking in every direction, watching everything and everyone. He didn’t look at me or even twitch at my attention, but I felt his shifting presence at the edge of my thoughts and there was an image drawn in it, made of sparks and circuits of light.

There are still many sparks, Vulturnus spoke into my head, a hum to the not-words. Shall I snuff them out as well?

“Kill any other lights you find and cut any communications that are still working,” I said. “I’ll meet you there.”

There was a flash of glowing teeth in lightning’s changing face and then he lost form entirely, dematerializing and rushed out of the ship. The few lights that had been on, mainly the ones near him, flickered out.